Cottonwood and Aspen, Autumn, Eastern Sierra. Sierra Nevada, California. October 9, 2015. © Copyright 2015 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.
Fall colors come to cottonwood and aspen groves in McGee Canyon
From the valley east of the Sierra the upper reaches of this canyon are not hard to see, though the bottom of the canyon and its entrance point are not so obvious. Pulling off on US 395 some distance from the canyon, a road rises up the alluvial hills at the base of the Sierra and traverses across toward an old lateral moraine. Rounding this hill, the tree-lined creek draining the canyon comes into view and a gentle through sage brush country passes a campground and a pack station before reaching the end of the road and trailhead.
This canyon rises quickly, and from the cottonwood lowlands one can hike into subalpine country in a short time, and it isn’t much further to get to backcountry lakes that seem to sit at the base of the Sierra crest. I paused along the road in the sage brush zone to make this photograph. Fall cottonwood trees are in the foreground, and further up the U-shaped canyon aspen trees have turned yellow. The remnants of an early autumn storm are seen, too, in the dusting of snow high up the rocky slopes at the head of the canyon.
G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer and visual opportunist. His book, “California’s Fall Color: A Photographer’s Guide to Autumn in the Sierra” is available from Heyday Books and Amazon.
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